Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn

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Take a smidgen of RE and add a pinch of Under Siege 2, what you get is this sub par game.

By David Zdyrko

Developed by an internal studio of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. called Sugar & Rockets, Covert Ops: Nuclear dawn is an action/adventure game that was released in Japan under the title of Chase the Express. The game, which features prerendered backdrops and the same type of gameplay style of Capcom's Resident Evil games, puts users in the role of Jack Morton, a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force that has been assigned to protect the French ambassador.

The basic plot is this: The Blue Harvest, which is a highly advanced armored military train, is hijacked and the French ambassador and his family are taken hostage. As the lone survivor of the crew that was supposed to watch over the train, the player must take on the terrorist group called the "Knights of the Apocalypse," and save the ambassador, his family, and the train.

While it isn't the most imaginative of plots, the story backdrop combined with the game's fast-paced opening cinema, which was fairly enjoyable despite the horrible renders of many of the characters' facial features, provided hope for a potentially enjoyable videogame. Sadly, there's very little enjoyment to be had with this CD in your trusty little gray box.

Gameplay The game's setting proves to be one of its biggest problems. Since the mass majority of the adventure is set on The Blue Harvest, there's not really a lot of variety in the environments. With the exception of a few sections of the game where the player does battle on the top of the train or on different trains, they're stuck in the belly of The Blue Harvest. While there are well over a dozen cars, each with two levels, it just lacks any sort of diversity.

All of this is made worse by the fact that the player is required to do quite a bit of backtracking throughout the game to solve many of its puzzles, most of which are simply the "find a locked door" and then "find the key" types of brainteasers. Towards the end of the game, there are numerous instances where the player is forced to do things like go from cart #6 to #14 just to find something or trigger an event, only to follow that up with going all the way back to the original cart. If the mindless backtracking weren't painful enough, the player is greeted with a long load screen every time that he moves to a different cart or to a different floor on the same cart -- slowing down the pace of the game even more.

The general controls of the game are very similar to what you're treated with in games like Resident Evil; push the directional pad up to make the character move forward, down to move backwards, and left or right to rotate the character. People used to playing games like Resident Evil and Fear Effect shouldn't have too much of a problem with it, but it's quite honestly one of the worst control schemes ever devised for a videogame. In addition to the basic movements, players are also able to make Jack Morton perform such important tasks such as roll to the left or right, do a quick 180 degree turn, and crouch down to avoid being hit. The crouch proves to be a very important skill, as players will find it very useful in avoiding the enemy attacks.

Even if players are able to look past the controls, the bad cameras may prove to be a different story. The preset camera positions seem to always be set in the worst possible angle, causing players to sometimes walk into a room with an enemy and have to fight that enemy without ever seeing him. This forces the player to shoot blindly without knowing if he's targeted the enemy -- which proves to be a big waste of bullets. This combined with the fact that ammo is very limited and players can't hold that many items at one time makes for a very aggravating gaming experience. It's quite ridiculous and is simply horrible game design.

Graphics Aside from the lack of any really large open environments, Covert Ops could actually be considered a very good-looking game. The backgrounds are quite detailed and feature some excellent textures. Things such as the blood splattered all over the walls just do wonders in helping set the sinister mood of the game. What's more, the 3D character models are fairly well done and have decent animation.

Sound Overall, the game's audio can be best described as above average. The music does a splendid job of setting the present mood of the game, even though it really isn't that memorable on the whole. The sound effects are fairly typical, with gunshots that sound like gunshots and so forth. The only real negative in the audio department is that the game's voiceovers range from average to completely painful. Activision has had a solid run of games with good voice acting, but it looks like that streak has ended here.

Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn

The Knights of the Apocalypse have abducted the French Ambassador, and Jack Morton is the only man who can save him. You take the role of Morton, the only surviving member of the Knights' ambush, as you search through trains with more than a dozen multi-level cars and battle the kidnappers on your quest to save the Ambassador. Along the way, you must also solve a variety of puzzles and play three different mini-games to proceed through the game. The French are counting on you to save their Ambassador from certain doom in COVERT OPS: Nuclear Dawn.

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The Verdict

There's not really that much more that needs to be said here that wasn't mentioned in the review above. Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn was a completely unsatisfactory gaming experience from beginning to end. It basically took all of the problems with games like Resident Evil and left out the things that made RE great, such as the engrossing storyline and amazing atmosphere. There's just not that much that can be said about this game that's positive.